Terry v. Terry

154 So. 3d 993, 2013 WL 856660, 2013 Ala. Civ. App. LEXIS 59
CourtCourt of Civil Appeals of Alabama
DecidedMarch 8, 2013
Docket2110858
StatusPublished
Cited by1 cases

This text of 154 So. 3d 993 (Terry v. Terry) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Civil Appeals of Alabama primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Terry v. Terry, 154 So. 3d 993, 2013 WL 856660, 2013 Ala. Civ. App. LEXIS 59 (Ala. Ct. App. 2013).

Opinion

[995]*995 On Application for Rehearing

THOMPSON, Presiding Judge.

This court’s opinion of December 7, 2012, is withdrawn, and the following is substituted therefor.

Emily Brackin Terry (“the mother”) appeals from a judgment of the Lawrence Circuit Court (“the trial court”) denying her request to move to South Carolina with the child she had with Adam G. Terry (“the father”).

The record indicates that the mother and the father have never been married to each other. The child was born in May 2007. As the result of a paternity action in the Lawrence Juvenile Court,1 the mother and the father were awarded joint legal custody of the child, and the mother was awarded primary physical custody, subject to the father’s visitation. The father pays child support.

The mother married Joshua Terry2 (“Terry”) in June 2011, when he graduated medical school. In his deposition, which was admitted at the evidentiary hearing in this matter, Terry said that when he proposed to the mother in January 2011, he did not know where he would be going to complete his residency program in anesthesiology. He explained that medical-school graduates do not have a choice regarding where they will go to complete their residencies; instead, they are “matched” with a program, and only one program is offered to each medical-school graduate. Completion of a residency program is required to obtain a license to practice medicine. In other words, Terry explained, the “system” tells a medical-school graduate where he or she has to go to take part in a residency program; the medical-school graduate does not make the choice. Terry explained that he applied to attend the residency program at the University of Alabama-Birmingham, and that that program was his first choice, but he was not assigned to that program. On March 15, 2011, Terry learned that he had been “matched” with the Medical University of South Carolina (“MUSC”), in Charleston. When Terry was deposed, he was in the first year of a four-year residency program in anesthesiology at MUSC.

The mother notified the father of her intention to move with the child from Lawrence County to Charleston when she and Terry married. The father agreed that the notice complied with the requirements of the Alabama Parent-Child Relationship Protection Act (“the Act”), § 30-3-160 et seq., Ala.Code 1975. The father timely objected to the proposed move, filed a petition to enjoin the move, and requested a custody modification. In response, the mother filed a counterclaim in which she asked that the father’s visitation schedule be modified in accordance with the trial court’s “out-of-state” visitation schedule. The child was permitted to move to South Carolina with the mother and Terry during the pendency of this action.

At the hearing on the parties’ respective pleadings, the father, who was 27 years old at the time of the hearing, testified that he was single and lived in a house in Trinity, in Lawrence County, that had belonged to his grandparents. The father testified that he was in a relationship with a woman who lived in Mississippi, that he hoped to marry, but that he did not intend to move to Mississippi.

The father worked for Naffco, a business that sells fire engines. His sales [996]*996territory included north Alabama and all of Mississippi and Tennessee. The father said that he traveled for work and estimated that he stayed out of town overnight between four and six nights a month. The father was also required to travel to Pennsylvania for work a few times each year.

The mother testified that the child, Terry, and she lived in a gated community in a suburb of Charleston. At the time of trial, the child was four years old and attended a day care across the street from where the mother worked as a registered nurse for a gastroenterology center. The mother said she was never required to travel for work and that she was able to be home with the child every evening. She and Terry both described their life in Charleston, saying that they had joined a church there and that the child had made friends in the area. The evidence indicated that the child did not attend church with the father. The mother testified regarding cultural and historical sites the child had visited in Charleston that were not available in Lawrence County, such as a children’s museum, an aquarium, Fort Sumter National Monument, and the USS Yorktown, a World War II aircraft carrier.

The father said that he frequently spoke to the child on the telephone, but he complained that the mother was listening to the conversations by putting the father’s calls on the speakerphone. The mother testified that the child, who was four years old at the time, had learned to put the calls on the speakerphone after the mother allowed the child to talk to the father on the speakerphone as the child took a bath. The mother said that the child’s attention span for a “normal” telephone conversation was “not that long” and that the child would put the father’s calls on the speakerphone while he played. The mother said she did not intend to monitor the father’s conversations with the child, but she had become concerned when she overheard the father tell the child that South Carolina was not the child’s home. The mother said that, because they were living in South Carolina, she believed that South Carolina was the child’s home, and she did not believe the father’s comment was appropriate to tell a four-year-old child.

Much of the testimony involved the parties’ inability to reach an agreement regarding a visitation schedule, who would be required to travel for visitation, and who would be responsible for the costs associated with travel. There has been more than one visitation schedule entered in this matter, and the parties have gone to mediation in an attempt to work out a schedule between them. That effort was unsuccessful. The mother testified that she had discussed visitation issues with her attorney, and she believed that she was abiding by the schedule that was currently in place.

The father testified that he had continued to exercise his visitation after the child moved to South Carolina, and he acknowledged that, in fact, he was spending the same number of days with the child each month as he had before the child moved. The record also indicates that there had been conflict between the mother and the father when meeting to transfer the child, so the transfers have been carried out in public places, such as fast-food restaurants. The mother submitted a proposed visitation schedule that would provide the father with extended visitations around the holidays and during the summer. She also offered to let the father have additional visitations with the child in Charleston if the father visited there. The father proposed a visitation schedule that would require the child to use Thanksgiving Day and Christmas Day as travel days between the parties’ residences. The mother ob[997]*997jected to that proposal on the basis that it would not be in the child’s best interest.

The father testified that he had taken vacations during the pendency of this litigation, but he had not traveled to South Carolina to see the child. The father said that he went to New Orleans when the University of Alabama played in the National Championship football' game in January 2012, but he did not have a ticket to attend the game. The father also traveled to two away games to see Alabama play football.

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Related

Terry v. Terry
154 So. 3d 1002 (Supreme Court of Alabama, 2013)

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
154 So. 3d 993, 2013 WL 856660, 2013 Ala. Civ. App. LEXIS 59, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/terry-v-terry-alacivapp-2013.